«Y». ÁLVARO NEGRO

Curator: David Barro

Artist: Álvaro Negro

29 September 2017 - 28 January 2018

Some artists arrive at a theme through
research; others do so by inclination. Álvaro Negro clearly belongs to the
former. An attentive look at his career discovers many reinterpretations, the
result of acting unhurriedly and of a continuous dialogue with painting and
with a series of elective affinities, in many cases, artists, but also writers,
poets, architects… The exhibition prepared for the CGAC is a retrospective look
at his work that stresses a fundamental question: the gradual discovery of a
personal and recognisable language already inherent in his early series and
which in the last decade is consolidated and maximised in a single atmosphere.

And so, works from some of his series from
the mid nineteen-nineties will coincide, as is the case of Item Perspectiva (Perspective Item) or Symmetrĭa (Symmetry); some of
his early video works during his London phase; the Monteagudo video
series; his particular Mont Sainte-Victoirein Galicia’s inner heart;
his Penumbrosos (Shadowy)
series of paintings, as well as a meticulous selection of works carried out in
the last years in different materials such as the mirror—as is the case of the
paradigmatic Cadro-Tumba (Tomb-Painting),
stone, sackcloth or paper, the majority of them not seen before.

In all of
the above lies a detailed analysis of the painting genre which has not lost
sight of historical questions that, by comparison or by contrast, are pertinent
in respect of their contemporary status. In his work, we find references to the
light in Renaissance painting, to an awareness of colour with respect to its
historical connotations, a formal deployment beyond the painting itself—in a
type of reincarnation of the painting into other media such as photography or
video-, and a constant concern for the modulation of space and architecture.
With regard to the latter, it should be pointed out that the narrative of this
evolution has been considered in parallel with the study of the very
architecture of the rooms designed by Álvaro Siza, so
much so that both the downward light modulated by the skylights as well as the
succession of perspectives between the different rooms —with the final vacuum
of the Double Space— have served as a starting point from which to develop the
exhibition’s space-time rhythm. In the end, it is about building a time in
which space and work converge as a threshold.

The
exhibition takes place within a two-fold exhibitory and editorial project
directed by Santiago Olmo, in charge of the CGAC’s programming, and curated by David
Barro.